Episode #1420

Here Lies Love & Deaf Theater

Friday, May 17, 2013

Ruthie Ann Miles (center) and the cast of Here Lies Love
(Joan Marcus)

“
When you hear there’s a disco musical about Imelda Marcos, you think it's going to be about shoes.

— Alex Timbers

This week, two unique theater events. Kurt Andersen talks with Alex Timbers, director of a new musical about Imelda Marcos — part history lesson, part disco dance party, but no shoe jokes. A Deaf actor performing in a signed version of a Harold Pinter play explains why on stage, actors’ voices are just a distraction from actual performance. Brazilian cellist Dom La Nena performs live. And Kurt makes small talk at the deathbed of network TV.

Tags:

It’s commonly said now that we’re living in a golden age of television, but try telling that to executives at the Big Four networks. The buzzy shows you love to talk about are on cable, while CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox are all wrapping up one of their worst seasons on record. Many successful shows ...

The director Alex Timbers is young, but in the last few years he’s already carved out a unique niche as a director of historical mashup musicals. He directed Gutenberg! The Musical! as well as the critically acclaimed Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Timbers is the director of a new show, Here Lies Love ...

Oliver Sacks’ book Awakenings tells the story of how, as a young doctor in the 1960s, Sacks “woke up” a hospital ward full of people with a rare type of paralyzing encephalitis, using the drug L-dopa. Robin Williams played Sacks in a Hollywood version of Awakenings, but A Kind of Alaska ...

May Update: The shelf is designed to help Ezra see the books’ covers and select the one he wants easily, though Ariel acknowledges that as a toddler, Ezra “is going to take all of the books off the shelf no matter what.” The project came off rather smoothly. “I’m of the ‘measure twice ...

Singer-songwriter Dominique Pinto goes by Dom La Nena, ‘Dom the Little Girl.’ Like Lil’ Wayne before her, the name refers unironically to her delicate stature. Unlike Lil’ Wayne, La Nena makes music that fits the pseudonym: delicate, very simple acoustic songs that could almost be lullabyes ...